IGM Aus – The ‘Edge Of Twilight’ Story

It’s a new year, and generally new years mean new beginnings. Today on IGM Aus, let’s check out a former Australian based game that returned out of the blue at the end of 2012 and is looking for a new beginning of its own. But at what cost?

Edge of Twilight was a promising title. Mixing a post-apocalyptic steampunk aesthetic with a 3rd person fantasy adventure, there was plenty of hype surrounding the games initial announcement in 2008, with Brisbane based Fuzzyeyes Studios handling production. The trailer below showed plenty of potential, a wonderful looking world with plenty of quirky characters and some intriguing lore behind the story.

Everything seemed to be going well. E3 2009 was a boon for the game, plenty of positive words were spoken and the buzz was increasing. Unfortunately, someone didn’t tell the Gaming Gods.

December 2009. News broke that the Aussie studio was on the verge of closing its doors. Fuzzyeyes also had two other studios at the time, Beijing and Singapore, but it was the Brisbane studio that was hit the hardest. Lay offs hit the studio amid rumours the game had stopped production months before. Some sources claimed the studio was still alive and that the game was simply in a short stasis period, with outsourcing teams brought in until Fuzzyeyes were back on track.

The rumours eventually came true. Fuzzyeyes Australia vanished from existence, Edge of Twilight slipped from its release date and for a long, long time, nobody ever heard a thing. That was until just a few months ago when, out of nowhere the game surprisingly resurfaced.

Under a new partnership between the Asian based company now known as Fuzzyeyes Entertainment and JDJC, Edge of Twilight climbed back out of the shadows as if it had never left. It was hard to believe at first, given the near three year hiatus. Further confirmation came through not only of a full release on Xbox 360 and PS3 in early/mid 2013, but of an iOS spin-off to go along with it inside the launch window.

Little has been said as to what really happened to Fuzzyeyes and where this publishing partnership came from. Unfortunately it seems as though none of the team involved in initial development are still around, with the work having shifted out of Australia entirely. Frustratingly, the official Fuzzyeyes website barely mentions anything in terms of who the team are, save for where they currently reside. Likewise the Facebook and Twitter feeds barely host any kind of news outside of the fact that the game is coming soon.

What’s stranger, the Fuzzyeyes Entertainment website only hosts the now three year old teaser trailers, whilst the Edge of Twilight official site doesn’t have anything outside of three release dates listed towards the bottom of the page. It doesn’t bode anyone with much confidence if there’s so little to show.

So what happened to the original development team? Why is Edge of Twilight back on the cards after all this time? How much of the game has changed, if anything at all? That’s the most concerning of questions, given that we’ve yet to see a new trailer or any new images showing off the game in any kind of state since the vanishing act.

There’s small consolation that the game does exist at least in some form, but the fact that it’s no longer an Australian production is a huge disappointment, especially given how well it was turning out and perhaps how far along the game was. Maybe we’ll never know.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on Edge of Twilight either way, out of curiosity if nothing else. Hopefully we don’t get the same results as other titles that have had long and complex development cycles. A quick shout out while I’m here to former lead designer Andy Chrysafidis. If you’re out there Andy, get in touch!

That’s all for IGMAus this week. Keep an eye out over the coming weeks, there’s this little thing called the Global Game Jam coming up real soon…